MEMORY SYSTEM FOR SPEECHES, JOKES, NARRATIVES, DRAMATIC PARTS AND POEMS, ARTICLES

The problems and embarrassments with the items listed in the
title of this chapter are almost endless!
The speech maker, terrified that he will make a blunder in
front of his audience, usually reverts to reading word-for-
word from a prepared text, the result of which is inevitably a
monotonous and de-personalised presentation. The slightly
more courageous speech-maker will often commit his speech
to memory, falling into the trap of scrambling through it as
fast as possible in order to get to the end before he forgets
something! In most cases he does forget something and the
most awkward silences ensue as he gropes for the lost
thread.
Similar, although not so important, situations arise in the
telling of jokes. These are not so much embarrassing to the
story teller as annoying to the person to whom the joke is being
told. How familiar is the situation in which, after ages of build
up, the story teller suddenly looks at you with a slack jaw and
the exclamation 'Damn! I've forgotten the punch line, but
anyway it was a really funny story'.
Dramatic parts present a different problem in that they are
usually to be memorised by actors who have continual practise
sessions with the same material. Their task is nevertheless still
difficult, and each member of the group must make sure that
his familiarity with the material is at least on a par with that of
the other members. In more lengthy and difficult works,
soliloquies and poems are among the items that have to be
remembered, and the task becomes even more difficult.
Remembering articles is often necessary in an academic or
business situation, embarrassment usually arising during exam
time when the student 'knows that he knows' but just can't get the
information off the tip of his tongue or his mind; and in the
business situation where one is asked to discuss a report that
everyone else has read, and either goes completely blank or
cannot recall a major point.
These are the problems. How can they be solved? Un-
fortunately there is no simple system such as the Link and Peg
systems discussed previously, but there are methods and
techniques that make the remembering of this kind of material
much easier. As the techniques vary slightly in different cases,
I shall consider each individually.
Speeches
If you wish to make a good speech one of the cardinal rules
is never to memorise it word for word. Another is never to read
it.
1. Generally research the topic about which you are going
to speak, making recordings of ideas, quotations and references
which you think" might prove relevant.
2. Having completed your basic research sit down and plan
out the basic structure of your presentation. Do not start to
write your speech before you have completed your basic
design. I have known people who have written the 'same'
speech seven times before arriving at their final draft. If they
had organised themselves a little more adequately to begin
with, weeks could have been saved!
3. With your basic structure in front of you fill in the details
in note form so that you complete an outline which needs only
grammatical and sentence structure changes to become a
coherent presentation.
4. Practise making your speech from this completed out-
line! You will find that, having completed the research and
having thought about the structure of the material, you will
already have nearly memorised your speech! Initially, of
course, there will be points at which you hesitate, but with a
little practice you will find that not only do you know your
speech, you also know what you are talking about !
This point is especially important, for it means that when
you finally do speak to your audience you need have no fear of
forgetting the word-order or what you are presenting. You
simply say what you have to say, using the appropriate voca-
bulary and not a rigid succession of sentence structures. In
other words, you become a creative rather than a static speaker.
This is Always preferably.
5. As a precautionary step it is advisable to jot down on a
small card, or to remember on one of your smaller memory
systems, the key words in the basic outline of your speech. This
greatly reduces the possibility of forgetting.
The only problem you may consider still unsolved is that
of not being able, immediately, to find the right word at the
right time. Don't worry about this. When the audience senses
that a speaker knows what he is talking about, an effective
pause makes it obvious that he is creating on the platform.
This adds rather than subtracts from the enjoyment of listen-
ing, for it makes the presentation less formal and more
spontaneous.
Jokes and Narratives
Jokes and narratives are far easier to deal with than are
speeches, because most of the creative work has already been
done for you! The problem is nevertheless a two-fold one:
first, you must remember the joke or narrative to begin with,
and second, you must remember its details.
The first of these problems is easily solved by using a section
of the major system as a permanent library for the stories you
wish to file. I need go into this point no further, as it is simply
a matter of selecting a key word and associating it with the key
word of the System.
The second problem is slightly more difficult to overcome,
and involves once again our use of the link system. Let us take,
for example, the joke about the man who went to the pub
and bought a pint of beer. Having bought this beer, he sud-
denly realised he had to make a telephone call, but knew that
some of the 'characters' in the bar might well swipe his pint
before he returned. In order to prevent this he wrote on his
glass 'I am the World's Karate Champion.' and went to
make his telephone call, securely thinking that his beer was
safe.
When he returned he saw immediately that his glass was
empty and noticed more scribbling underneath his own. It
read 'I am the World's fastest runner—thanks!'
To remember this joke we consciously select key words from
it, joining them into the basic narrative.
All we need from this full paragraph of narration are the
words 'pint', 'phone', 'write', 'karate champion', and 'runner'.
With these few words, which can be linked in whatever way
we please, the whole sequence and essence of the joke will
return immediately, and those horrible silences as one runs out
of steam in the middle of a story need never recur!
Articles
Articles may need to be remembered on a very short-term
basis or on a long-term basis, and the systems for remembering
each are different.
If you have to attend a meeting or to make a brief resume of
an article you have only recently read, you can remember it
almost totally, and at the same time can astound your listeners
by remembering the pages you are referring to! The method is
simple: take one, two or three ideas from each page of the article
and slot them on to one of your peg memory systems. If there is
only ono idea per page, you will know that when you are down
to memory word 5 in your basic system, you are referring to
the 5th page, whereas if there are two ideas per page and you
are at memory word 5 you will know you are the top of page 3!
When an article has to be remembered over a longer period
of time, we once again revert to the link system, taking key
words from the article and linking them in such a way as to
make them most memorable. This method of remembering
will enable you not only to recall the sequence of the events
and ideas but also to retain a more adequate general impression
of what the article was about. The act of consciously attempting
to remember is itself a part of learning.
Dramatic Parts and Poems
The last section of this chapter deals with those two items
that have been in the past, and are still unfortunately today,
the bane of the schoolchild.
The method usually employed (and recommended) is to
read a line over and over again, 'get it'; read the next line,
'get it'; join the two together; 'get them'; read the next line
and so on ad nausum until the first lines have been forgotten!
A system recommended and used successfully by well-
known actors and actresses is almost the reverse. In this system
the material to be remembered is read and re-read quickly but
with understanding over a period of four days, approximately 5
times a day. In this manner the reader becomes far more
familiar with the material than he realises and at the end of his
20th reading tries to recall, without looking at the text, the
material to be remembered. Almost without fail the mind will
have absorbed 90% or more totally, and remembering will
have been a natural outgrowth of reading!
As I have said, this system has been found far more success-
ful than the line-by-line repeating system, but even it can be
improved considerably.
Once again the link system and key words come into play.
If the material to be remembered is poetry, a few major key
words will help the mind to 'fill in' the remaining words which
will almost automatically fall into place between the key words.
If the material to be remembered is part of a script, once
again key words and linking images can prove essential. The
basic content of a long speech can be strung together with ease,
and the cues from speaker to speaker can also be handled far
more effectively. It is these cues that often cause chaos on the
stage because of the silences and breaks in continuity that may
occur when one performer forgets his last word or another
forgets his first. If these last words (or even actions) are linked
in the way that we link objects in our memory system, breaks
and confusion can be completely avoided.
In summary, the remembering of speeches, narratives,
jokes, articles, dramatic parts and poems involves a number
of slightly differing techniques. In all cases, however, the use
of some form of link, key words, and repetition is necessary.